In recent years, there has been a movement towards shared parenting time schedules. This movement has been supported by the enactment of legal presumptions for 50/50 or joint custody arrangements. According to The Washington Post, by the end of 2017 the legislatures in more than 20 states had considered bills that would encourage shared parenting or create a legal presumption in favor of joint custody when parents disagree about what would be best for their children post-divorce.
Shared parenting arrangements have been advocated by father’s rights advocates for years. These groups draw strength from the feelings expressed by many men that, in the post-divorce context, men effectively become a “wallet” rather than a person. This sense sometimes stems from the child support obligations that some men find burdensome in relation to their total income. Many men also complain that they do not have as much parenting time as they desire with or feel entitled to even though they are providing financial support for their children.
A survey online reported that, as of June 2018, twenty states were awarding 50% parenting time, on average, to fathers. Nationally, the average was 35% parenting time for fathers. In Maryland, fathers receive an average of 26.1 % of the parenting time.
In high conflict situations, sometimes one parent’s sense that his or her time with the children is inadequate or unfair leads to allegations that the co-parent is “alienating” the other parent from the children. Within the field of family law alienation is distinguished from “gate-keeping” when the other parent has a history of abuse, addiction, criminal involvement or otherwise poses a threat to the health, safety and welfare of the children. However, the line between such “gate-keeping” and true “alienation” can be difficult to define.
Critics of the movement towards shared parenting argue that legal presumptions and joint custody arrangements have a negative impact upon the force of the protections provided under the law to victims of all forms of domestic violence.
It has also been argued that legal presumptions reduce, to an unreasonable degree, judicial discretion in determining what is in the children’s best interest. This, in turn, creates a greater potential for children to be placed unwittingly in harm’s way because the presumption would need to be rebutted by sufficient evidence of inadequacies in parenting, mental or physical health issues, a history of violence or other criminal behavior, or patterns of addiction for one or both parents.
Many parents who are contemplating a separation or trying to put together a parenting plan seem to come quickly to the conclusion that they “want a 2-2-5.” Under this schedule, Parent A has two nights of parenting time, then Parent B has two nights, then Parent A has five nights, and then Parent B has five nights. The pattern then repeats, every two weeks. Unless parent or child work schedules dictate otherwise, a 2-2-5 parenting time schedule usually begins on a Monday in order to permit each parent to have a full weekend with the children. One benefit of this access schedule is that many of the transitions from one parent’s house to the other parent’s house occur through school or daycare - with one parent dropping off the children and the other children picking them up. In just reading how the schedule works, though, one of the negatives of this parenting time schedule should be clear: the number of transitions for the children. Another negative of this parenting time schedule is that it usually requires the co-parents to live in close proximity to each other.
Sometimes a close cousin, the 2-3-3 parenting time schedule, is preferred for younger children, when a five-day stretch is too long a time frame for the children to be away from one parent or the other. The 2-2-3 parenting time schedule works as you may suspect: Parent A has two nights, the Parent B has two nights, the Parent A has three nights, and then Parent B has three nights.
Other common shared parenting time schedules are alternate week and split week. One common difficulty, with both of these alternatives is that often parents do not ever have a full weekend with the children.
All of these common parenting time schedules show indirectly the complexity that a shared parenting time arrangement can bring to families who are often already challenged to balance work, school, extracurricular activities and social/community involvement. Communicating effectively as co-parents, and addressing challenges early, is what makes it all work.
Chandler, M. A. (2017). “More than 20 states in 2017 considered laws to promote shared custody of children after divorce.” The Washington Post. (Accessed October 23, 2019).
How much custody time does dad get in your state? (2018 June 5). Retrieved from www.custodyxchange.com.